Over at Bench Memos, Ed Whelan notes that while, with her usual spin on things, the NYTimes’ Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse is covering the high court’s national security docket, including last week’s enemy combatant case, Boumediene, Greenhouse’s husband, Eugene Fidell, has been busy filing amicus briefs in the case on behalf of the combatants. Fidell, as Ed recounts, is a prominent Bush critic. You would not know that from Greenhouse’s reporting — she plainly doesn’t think it’s worthy of mention.

She may have a point. The Times’ editorial bent so routinely pervades its news reporting that calling its attention to more elementary conflicts of interest seems quaint. Still it’s bracing hypocrisy when one reviews the Times recent editorial rants about, for example, Alberto Gonzales purportedly lacking the ethical sensibility to distinguish between being the Attorney General and the president’s lawyer, or John Podhoretz being named to take over the prestigious editor’s chair at Commentary which his father, Norman, so distinguished.